There could be one emitter that’s CW, one that’s NW, and one that’s WW.

Completely not worth doing, but it’ll be the perfect tint!

I mentioned this elsewhere recently, but it all goes well with the BLF Lantern, I could see a future flashlight mixing emitters on a board with separate channels for emitters for tint-ramping purposes. Form factor could be a D4 style light where each emitter has its own optic, or I’d be curious if a closely clustered quad like Clemence does with E21A’s could share the same floody optic for different color temperature emitters.

I’ve done that before. It can give quite good results if you use the right emitters.

Mixing and matching emitters is fun.

I have one of my Emisar D4 lights outputting 4500K color tint. Using two 4000K XPL HI and two 5000K XPL HI

Beam shot?

Looks the same as a normal D4, but 4500K tint. The output from the different emitter overlaps completely and you just see one beam with the new mixed tint. You can’t really even see mixed emitters were used unless you turn it on moonlight and look at the emitters or shine it a wall or piece of paper a few inches away on very low power.

Not interested in throw or spread.
it’s just a beautiful LOOKING light and I’ll have one just to have it in my hand.
I’ve got a zillion throwers and spreaders now.
Just looking for the extra nice ones nowadays.
Which this one definitely is. I hate the square ones. (D1/D4 etc)

At some point once the multi-button UIs and drivers are done I’m sure varied emitter tint lights with tint ramping will be a thing. Its already a reality with the Zanflare T1 (despite the obvious differences there), I dont see any reason it couldn’t be done in a regular flashlight other than some possible weird beam profile.

At some point once the multi-button UIs and drivers are done I’m sure varied emitter tint lights with tint ramping will be a thing. Its already a reality with the Zanflare T1 (despite the obvious differences there), I dont see any reason it couldn’t be done in a regular flashlight other than some possible weird beam profile.

At some point once the multi-button UIs and drivers are done I’m sure varied emitter tint lights with tint ramping will be a thing. Its already a reality with the Zanflare T1 (despite the obvious differences there), I dont see any reason it couldn’t be done in a regular flashlight other than some possible weird beam profile.

At some point once the multi-button UIs and drivers are done I’m sure varied emitter tint lights with tint ramping will be a thing.

Tint ramping already works in the BLF Lantern project. The code was written three months ago, and it’s pretty much just waiting on hardware details to get finalized.

This should also work for flashlight-style lights with multiple emitters, but it’ll either be limited to one power channel per tint like the lantern (so the lowest levels will be very coarse) or it’ll need a bigger MCU with more PWM pins.

So it’s working, but to make it practical for something like a D4 it’ll take more work. That would need a FET+1+FET+1, and the attiny85 doesn’t have enough pins. Also, the tint ramping math gets a little weird when it has multiple power channels per tint. The lantern design is much simpler.

An extra button could help, but it’s really not required. It’s pretty difficult to fit more than one button on most compact flashlight designs, so I prefer to fit the feature in on one button instead of two or three.

Tint ramping was a pretty small change in Anduril. All I had to do was create an extra “state” which resides underneath everything else, catching un-handled button events which fell through upper layers. Then tell it to handle a button sequence nothing else uses, or which almost nothing else uses… and like magic, every mode supports tint ramping.

In this case, it used “3 clicks but hold the last click” to change tint, regardless of what mode the light is in. It works in every mode which doesn’t already consume that type of event. So the interface, in general, is:

Click: On/off.

Hold: Change brightness or speed (upward, also reverses).

Click, hold: Change brightness or speed (downward).

Click, click, hold: Change tint (reverses).

It may be a little more complicated with one button than it could be with two buttons, but it’s pretty universal across the entire interface so hopefully it won’t be too hard to remember.

This isn’t used for the FW3A though. So far, it’s only for the BLF Lantern. Each FW3A is a single tint, so it has no need for tint ramping.

Is it too late to make the FW3A into a wifi hotspot as well? That’d give us the need for even another button and would be so cool in a flashlight. I’ll bet nobody has ever thought of that. That would rule.

Is it too late to make the FW3A into a wifi hotspot as well? That’d give us the need for even another button and would be so cool in a flashlight. I’ll bet nobody has ever thought of that. That would rule.

There’s no market for it since you can already do that with your phone.

An extra button could help, but it’s really not required. It’s pretty difficult to fit more than one button on most compact flashlight designs, so I prefer to fit the feature in on one button instead of two or three.

Tint ramping was a pretty small change in Anduril. All I had to do was create an extra “state” which resides underneath everything else, catching un-handled button events which fell through upper layers. Then tell it to handle a button sequence nothing else uses, or which almost nothing else uses… and like magic, every mode supports tint ramping.

In this case, it used “3 clicks but hold the last click” to change tint, regardless of what mode the light is in. It works in every mode which doesn’t already consume that type of event. So the interface, in general, is:

Click: On/off.

Hold: Change brightness or speed (upward, also reverses).

Click, hold: Change brightness or speed (downward).

Click, click, hold: Change tint (reverses).

It may be a little more complicated with one button than it could be with two buttons, but it’s pretty universal across the entire interface so hopefully it won’t be too hard to remember.

This isn’t used for the FW3A though. So far, it’s only for the BLF Lantern. Each FW3A is a single tint, so it has no need for tint ramping.

I recall Imalent released a variable color temperature light a few years ago that sounded pretty cool. It had 2 emitters: one at something like 2700K and the other at 6800K. Supposedly you could smoothly change the color temperature of the light with a touchscreen slider. The light varied the tint by dynamically changing the output of each emitter, with the result that the light could output any color temp between the two emitters.

I wonder if someone could do something like that with a BLF light. Might be pretty cool.

Not everyone is aware that there used to be some flashlights controlled by Bluetooth a few years back. You could remotely turn the light on and off, adjust the brightness, change the settings such as strobe rate, the number of brightness levels, have “dico” mode, etc… It seems pretty cool, but the one light that I’m thinking of didn’t actually sell very well because the flashlight itself was not very good. Then you have the problem of the company needing to keep the app updated. Eventually you’ll lose the ability to control the light through the Bluetooth and then you’re stuck with a really expensive regular flashlight. Even in 2019, I’m not sure there is a market for Bluetooth controlled flashlights.

I recall Imalent released a variable color temperature light a few years ago that sounded pretty cool. It had 2 emitters: one at something like 2700K and the other at 6800K. Supposedly you could smoothly change the color temperature of the light with a touchscreen slider. The light varied the tint by dynamically changing the output of each emitter, with the result that the light could output any color temp between the two emitters.

I wonder if someone could do something like that with a BLF light. Might be pretty cool.

Imagine if a BLF light could do all that, but it didn’t require a phone, and it would be available soon.

I recall Imalent released a variable color temperature light a few years ago that sounded pretty cool. It had 2 emitters: one at something like 2700K and the other at 6800K. Supposedly you could smoothly change the color temperature of the light with a touchscreen slider. The light varied the tint by dynamically changing the output of each emitter, with the result that the light could output any color temp between the two emitters.

Imagine if a BLF light could do all that, but it didn’t require a phone, and it would be available soon.

IIRC, the touch screen was built into the flashlight. No phone necessary.